Lay the Mountains Low (18 page)

This damnable little war was almost over.

 

*
Much of this area crossed by both the Nez Perce and Howard's army in 1877 is today known as the Joseph Plains.

J
ULY
2, 1877

“I
CAN'T ORDER YOU TO STAY ON THIS SIDE OF THE RIVER
, Mr. Hunter,” General O. O. Howard had told the civilian leader from Dayton back on that first day the soldiers were attempting their perilous crossing. “Nor can I guarantee your safety if you go wandering off alone on the other side of the Salmon.”

“You still have your mind set against sending any of your friendlies out to find the war camp, General?” asked William Hunter.

“Not until I have enough of my men across should we have any more displays from the warriors like we had here day before yesterday.”

“Mind you, me and my men don't aim to get ourselves in any trouble, General Howard,” the civilian had assured him. “Just want to see where those Nez Perce have run off to. We figure to be back before this time tomorrow.”

He and two of his best friends from Dayton—a tiny community in eastern Washington Territory—swam their horses over to the west bank of the Salmon, then started north into the broken country. They hadn't been moving more than two hours when they were rewarded with sighting a half-dozen figures on foot in the distance.

“Enfant de garce!”
one of the six men sobbed as they lunged up among the trio of horsemen.

“Shit, any of you Americans?” Hunter asked, perplexed. “Speak English?”

“A little some,” confessed another of the bedraggled half-dozen.

“You look a sight, fellas,” Hunter said. “Where's your horses? Your guns?”

The good-talker shook his head as if searching for the
right words, perhaps any words, to use in telling the story as Hunter and his companions dropped to the ground and let their horses blow. Slowly, painstakingly, the story unfolded.

When the outbreak first began, the six Frenchmen had been on this west side of the Salmon, farther to the south. In fact, they claimed they had yelled a warning across the river to some American friends. Once hundreds of the Nez Perce showed up near the mouth of the White Bird, the Frenchmen fled deep into the hills on the other side of the Salmon. But not so far they hadn't heard all the gunfire the day of the battle.

Keeping to their side of the river, they had trained a keen eye on the migrations of the Non-Treaty bands as the Indians moved south to Horseshoe Bend, then crossed and started back north to where Larry Ott had been homesteading on Deer Creek then started to climb into the formidable terrain. Three days ago they had run across a trio of Chinese miners who warned them that war parties were prowling the countryside, horsemen who had allowed the Chinese to pass unharmed.

Two days back, the Frenchmen had taken refuge, hiding in a tiny abandoned cabin when they heard horses approaching outside, and were suddenly confronted with five warriors armed with rifles. The frightened Frenchmen quickly surrendered their three old shotguns. Before they rode off, the Nez Perce took more than one hundred dollars in gold and coin from the six miners—then told the Frenchmen to get away as far and as fast as they could from the country where no white man would be safe.

William Hunter dragged the short stub of his fat stogie from his teeth and thoughtfully inspected the moist, much-chewed end of the cigar. Then he said, “Lost your bird guns to them red bastards, and all your money, too.”

“They say they give us our lives in trade,” the French miner repeated.

“Tell you what, fellas,” Hunter declared. “You talk it over together, because I'll guarantee you boys one thing: If
you throw in with us and Howard's soldiers … you won't just get back what guns and money is owed you, but a whole heap of revenge, too.”

W
HILE
the
suapies
of Cut-Off Arm were struggling to maintain any momentum at all, the Non-Treaty bands were already more than twenty miles downstream, north along the Salmon at a traditional fording site known as Craig Billy Crossing. Joseph realized they had chosen well when they decided to follow the suggestions of Rainbow and Five Wounds, just returned from the buffalo country the afternoon of the fight at
Lahmotta
.

“We cross the Salmon, wait for the soldiers to follow, then lose them on the other side,” Rainbow had advised.

“And when we have lured the Shadows across, getting them snarled and lost in that rugged country, we will recross,” Five Wounds proposed. “That's when we'll be free to roam as we always have.”

Days ago, the scouts watched two smaller groups of soldiers leave Cut-Off Arm's massed army. One band took its empty pack animals and marched north for Fort Lapwai, clearly intending to bring back more supplies—which meant a longer effort on their part. An army so large surely needed a great deal of food. But that second band of
suapies
had marched directly for the settlements of Grangeville and Mount Idaho with a wagon gun, and from there they moved at night into the twisting canyon of the Clearwater, where the scouts lost track of the soldiers. None of the
Nee-Me-Poo
warrior chiefs could figure out where the
suapies
were bound or why.

After three days of struggle, Cut-Off Arm's foolish soldiers made it across the river—which meant it was finally time for the village to break camp where they had been waiting just north of the crossing, near the Deer Creek homestead of Larry Ott,
*
where there was a little level ground on which to pitch their lodges against the rainy sky.
Now they must forge their way across the muddy, broken landscape, climbing toward the Doumecq Plain above that evil Shadow's abandoned farm.

But to make time and to assure that they would stay far enough ahead of the soldiers, they would not be able to take everything from this point. As the chief in charge of the women and children, overseeing the camp itself, Joseph ordered that every unnecessary item of food and clothing be buried in numerous caches dug near rocks they would mark for their return when the present troubles were over.

And then he had turned to the young men not yet old enough to have fought against the soldiers at
Lahmotta,
youngsters nonetheless old enough to experience an eager enthusiasm. Their orders were to cull the old and the lame horses from their combined herds. These animals would be separated out from the stronger horses, then driven down their back trail where they would likely encounter the slowly advancing soldiers at some point in the next few days. It was a maneuver that might not necessarily retard the progress of the
suapies
but most assuredly would accelerate the progress of the camp in its march.

In the two weeks since his brother had defeated the horse soldiers at
Lahmotta,
there had been much said about Joseph behind the chief's back. None of it was good. Nearly all the talk was about his not taking up a weapon to fight off the soldiers, how he had not ventured out of camp to do battle even though Ollokot's warriors were outnumbered two-to-one. For some time now the talk whispered and often laughed about behind the hands had not been good.

But it was in these last few days that Joseph began to establish the reputation that would withstand the test yet to come. A legacy that would endure those terrible trials the
Nee-Me-Poo
could not even imagine at that moment. It was in this time that Joseph began to make decisions not having anything whatsoever to do with making war on some group of Shadow civilians or on that band of soldiers. No, without the showy fanfare of the war chiefs, Joseph had already begun
to quietly reach decisions that—months from now and many, many miles away—would ultimately assure the survival of his people.

There was no country better suited to ducking and dodging than this between the Snake and Salmon Rivers. And while Cut-Off Arm got bogged down in the mire of crags and rain-slickened trails, the
Nee-Me-Poo
would leap back across the Salmon, across the Camas Prairie, and on to the deep canyon of the Cottonwood that would lead the bands all the way to the Clearwater. Because this hard country lay in an arduous maze, few of the individual family groups or clans wandered away on their own. Fear of what followed them bound the many together and kept them moving north.

At one point they came across a large herd of cattle that Joseph's
Wallamwatkins
had been forced to abandon weeks ago when they crossed the Salmon at Rocky Canyon to join the last ever of the celebrations at
Tepahlewam
—just before the first settlers were murdered. After stopping here for most of a day, just long enough to butcher a few of the cattle, the village pushed on, leaving the lion's share of the beeves behind in the hills to graze until a better day when Joseph's people hoped to return here, when they could gather up their herd to take it back to their beloved Wallowa valley. But at this point in their flight they could ill afford the snail's pace burden of the white man's beef.

“
Eeh!
Look below!” one of the riders near the front of the march hollered out in unbounded joy.

Joseph smiled at his wife, then put heels to his pony as he sped along the column. Reining up beside Ollokot and Yellow Wolf, he gazed down the steep slope of the canyon.

“Our ford across the
Tahmonah
,
*
Brother,” Ollokot announced
as they paused to gaze down at their traditional crossing.
**

“Now that we've left Cut-Off Arm behind to struggle through these mountains,” Joseph said quietly, “we can start across the prairie, where we'll rejoin Looking Glass's people.”

“Once we reach that valley of the Clearwater,” Ollokot agreed, “the soldiers won't know where to find us. And if they do come looking for our camps, the dark canyons east of
Kamisnim Takin
*
are good places for our people to hide. Cut-Off Arm will never find us there.”

As for his own wound, Bird Alighting counted himself fortunate.

It could have been far, far worse for the rest of Looking Glass's band. Good that the Shadows were such poor shots when they became excited or angry or frightened. All those soldiers and the Shadows had managed to shoot only one
Nee-Me-Poo,
the young pony herder—named
Nennin Chekoostin,
called Black Raven—who had been caught in some cross fire before he could escape as their horse herd was captured. The other two deaths the enemy had caused only because of the terror the Shadows had created when they opened fire, without warning, on the sleepy morning camp. That young woman and her little infant—both of them drowned in Clear Creek—their bodies unclaimed until the white men left and the Looking Glass people could slip back into their devastated camp to look for what they could salvage.

A few of the women and one old man burned their hands putting out the smoldering fires of those two lodges the
suapies
had managed to destroy, hoping to save anything that hadn't yet burned. Oh, there were a few scrapes and cuts from running through the brush or stumbling among the rocks as the men, women, and children scrambled out of camp, fleeing beyond the hill just behind the village.

While the sun went down and the stars came out that day, Looking Glass and what warriors hadn't already gone off to join White Bird's and
Toohoolhoolzote's
fighting men gathered in the descending darkness and talked of what to do and where to go now that Cut-Off Arm had made war on them. It had served no purpose for their chief to stay neutral, many argued! The white man had attacked them. Even a neighboring chief camped nearby, the Palouse
Hatalekin,
was as homeless as they. Now they must choose.

“Even though we are already on the reservation,” Looking Glass protested, “our feet must take one path or another from this moment on.”

“We must drive the
suapies
from our country!” shouted Arrowhead, the warrior woman.

“The enemy will keep looking for our camps, which means the women and children will continue to suffer,” argued
Hatalekin,
the Palouse chief. “See how the soldiers came looking to attack White Bird.”

Shot Leg laughed and said, “But see what good it did those soldiers!”

“Yet other soldiers came looking for another village to attack, and this time it was ours!” Black Foot continued the lament.

“There really is little choice,” Looking Glass interrupted the heated discussion minutes later. “Do we want to become Christian Indians like Lawyer's or Reuben's people?”

“No!” Arrowhead growled throatily. “
Tananisa!
Damn them! Let the Kamiah people believe in the white man's god. We are Dreamers!”

“Or,” Looking Glass continued, “do we join the fight to hold onto this land of ours?”

“As for me,” Black Foot said, “there is no choice in what options the Shadows have handed us.”